Timeline

All measures are in pixels

ImageSize = width:160 height:550 PlotArea = left:50 right:0 bottom:10 top:10 AlignBars = justify

DateFormat = yyyy Period = from:1919 till:1991 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:5 start:1920

there is no automatic collision detection,
so shift texts up or down manually to avoid overlap

Define $dx = 25 # shift text to right side of bar

PlotData=

 bar:Leaders color:red width:25 mark:(line,white) align:left fontsize:S

 from:start till:1922 shift:($dx,15)   text:Vladimir~Ilyich~Lenin
 from:1922  till:1953 shift:($dx,5)    text:Josef~Stalin
 from:1953  till:1964 shift:($dx,5)    text:Nikita~Khrushchev
 from:1964  till:1982 shift:($dx,5)    text:Leonid~Brezhnev
 from:1982  till:1984 shift:($dx,-12)  text:Yuri~Andropov
 from:1984  till:1985 shift:($dx,4)    text:Konstantin~Chernenko fontsize:XS
 from:1985  till:end  shift:($dx,10)   text:Mikhail~Gorbachev